Europe is moving to protect cash by law, yet it is moving public services online by default. Most citizens will happily go digital, but Sanket Kumar Prajapati argues that Brussels should give people a legal right to deal with a human being. This right matters for the people who lack digital skills – and for everyone on the day the system fails
Europe is moving to protect cash by law. It should do the same for the person behind the counter: every public service that goes online needs a legal right to a human alternative. By 24 December, every EU country must offer a digital identity wallet, and negotiators hope to agree the digital euro before the year is out. Both projects assume that people can, and want to, run their lives on a screen.
In April 2025 the power went out across Spain and Portugal. Trains stopped, cash machines shut down and electronic payments were disrupted. For a day, millions of people found out how much of their lives depended on a single grid.
Brussels already accepts this logic for money. In July, Parliament voted to open talks on the digital euro. Its position would oblige euro area countries to keep cash accessible, stop businesses refusing it, and keep people free to choose between cash and the digital euro. The digital euro is designed to work offline, but an offline payment still needs a working device. Legislators have kept cash for exactly that reason.
Parliament would also have governments monitor cash availability, especially for older people, people on low incomes and people without bank accounts. Name who is most at risk, then keep checking how they are doing. Public services deserve the same treatment.
Eurostat found that 93% of Europeans used the internet weekly in 2025, yet 40% lacked basic digital skills. That means managing at least one simple task in each of five areas, from finding information to staying safe online: the everyday tasks a public service demands. In the Netherlands 84% clear the bar; in Romania only 32% do.
About 4% of Europeans have never used the internet, including roughly one in ten Germans aged 65 to 74. But the bigger group is the 40% who are online and still struggle. They are the ones a wallet app will test first.
EU statistical office Eurostat found that 40% of Europeans lack basic digital skills, and about 4% have never used the internet
A 2025 study of EU digital public services found that weak skills, poor access and bad design hit older, poorer and less educated people hardest, and recommended keeping face-to-face options. The European Economic and Social Committee warns that if access to services depends on a digital identity, many citizens could lose their right to them.
On paper, the law sees this coming. The revised eIDAS Regulation makes the wallet voluntary and bars disadvantaging people who don’t use it. But that protects only non-users of the wallet. It does nothing for people without a smartphone or a working login, and guarantees no human at the other end. Once services move online by default; voluntary has a way of turning compulsory.
In 2022 Carlos San Juan, a 78-year-old retired doctor from Valencia, started a petition after struggling with his bank’s limited counter service. More than 600,000 people signed. Campaigners asked for a legal guarantee; the banks offered a voluntary protocol. A law letting customers of large firms ask for a person came only in December 2025, and it covers companies, not the state. It shouldn’t take four years and 600,000 strangers to get a person to serve you.
Denmark offers a model for the public sector. Digital self-service is mandatory in many areas, but people who cannot manage are entitled to an alternative
Denmark offers a model for the public sector. Digital self-service is mandatory in many areas, but people who cannot manage can be exempted, and since 2023 exemption from Digital Post also exempts you from many public self-services, with an entitlement to an alternative. Denmark has 81% basic digital skills and still kept a human exit. You have to ask for it, but the principle is right: the screen comes first, and a person is there when it fails you.
The real question is what a state owes a citizen who can’t, or won’t, use a smartphone.
The EU wants all key public services online by 2030. Three rules would be a start. Every online public service should also offer a staffed counter or phone line, with the same deadlines and legal effect, at no extra fee. Nobody should lose a service or benefit for lacking a wallet, a smartphone or a login, extending the eIDAS guarantee to the whole digital front door. And governments should publish yearly how many people use the alternative, so success is judged by who is left out, not only by clicks.
Service delivery is largely national, but the EU already regulates the digital front door through eIDAS and the Single Digital Gateway Regulation, and its Declaration on Digital Rights and Principles promises a transition that leaves nobody behind. A human alternative written into those instruments would set a floor without dictating how countries build it. It must be a right, not a promise: promises depend on goodwill; rights can be enforced. It could be phased in, starting with services that carry deadlines or penalties, such as benefits and tax.
A state that saves money by pushing the cost onto its most vulnerable citizens’ time has not saved anything. It has just moved the bill
The cost need not be large. Counters can be shared across services and housed in post offices or libraries, as France has done with France Services. Nor need it slow digitisation: people are more willing to try a system they know they can walk away from. And a state that saves money by pushing the cost onto its most vulnerable citizens’ time has not saved anything. It has just moved the bill.
Europe is right to defend the banknote. The human counter is the public sector’s banknote, and everyone will be glad of it on the day the machines stop working.
